Poppy slung her familiar bag over her back. Dawn, who seemed happy to see her even though Poppy thought she might have been disappointed by her absence, spoke in quick, nervous bursts as they walked to her car. “You’re here. You’re here! It’s so good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be here,” Poppy said.

“I just wish you could have returned under better circumstances. And you know, I still think there ought to have been a funeral for your parents. I pushed and pushed. Funerals are for the living. For you. You and your sister. Even me! When things like this happen, we need closure. But Ann insisted. She said they absolutely didn’t want any sort of service, church or no.”

Or no. Poppy had forgotten how Milwaukeeans tack on or no or yet to the end of their sentences. Nice day yet. Gone fishing or no? Dawn’s Milwaukee accent was thick with indulged vowels.

“They hated funerals,” Poppy said. “My dad always said ‘you die, the end.’”

Why had they hated funerals so much? Poppy wished she could ask them. In the absence of a public memorial, Poppy had honored them her own way. She’d made an altar for them at Carenero Beach. She lit two candles every night for a week. She’d prayed and cried and meditated and tried to invoke their auras. None of it made her feel any better, or any closer to them.

“Sometimes it feels like your parents just slipped out the back door in the middle of the night. And now, well, here you are. Here we are.”

“It’s surreal.”

“Still no will?”

“Ann says she can’t find one. She’s the executor.”

“I could see your mother not worrying about a will, but Ed. He would have left one. He wouldn’t want you girls to have to sort everything out yourselves. What a mess. Good thing Ann is so good at managing situations like this.”

Poppy wanted to say, “As opposed to me, right?,” but she didn’t. It was no secret that tending to major life-and-death concerns wasn’t in her wheelhouse. She’d been too numb to function beyond autopilot since that horrible afternoon she’d read Ann’s email. That had been six months ago. Now the probate judge said they could dissolve the estate, which was why Poppy was home: to help dissolve it. “Dissolve” was the perfect word—to reduce everything their parents owned, including the Cape house, to nothing.

Dawn led Poppy through the sliding doors toward the parking ramp. The harsh winter wind blew off the lake and hit her with a slap of reality. She’d forgotten how quickly the cold could get into her bones.

“Ann tried so hard to reach you, hon. She didn’t say so, but I could tell she was worried. In this age of cell phones…”